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Did You Know?

Trivia:

This is the first Dr. Seuss CBS television special to feature the short version of the 1971-1975 Cat in the Hat Productions logo with only the "Cat in the Hat doing tricks" sequence.See more »

Quotes:

[first lines] Narrator:[sung] At the far end of town where the grickle grass grows/and the wind smells slow and sour when it blows/and no birds ever sing, excepting old crows/is the street of the lifted Lorax.See more »

Since I was a small child I have always enjoyed this little political
message about the fallacy of not having a suitable rights-enforcement
body ensuring property rights of individuals in their jurisdictional
area are upheld.

The Lorax was clearly the sole caretaker/maintainer/improver of the
land, fauna and flora and therefore the proper owner of the idyllic
setting the Onceler came across. Rather than attempting to negotiate
agreeable use of the land and resources in exchange for recompense, the
Onceler just moved his gang in to systematically steal and destroy the
Lorax's property (this is revealed in the first 5 minutes of the film).

Clearly this was an anarchic state with no specific judiciary or
security forces to enforce property rights. The Lorax, lacking
independent power to protect his property had to resort to negotiation,
which the Onceler - with greater numbers, finances, and physical
resources, and in the absence of any property rights enforcement bodies
- was able to safely ignore.

My children love this story. They can appreciate that human rights
include property rights, and they see that things would have been
better for both the Lorax and the Onceler if a properly constructed
rights-enforcing framework had been in place at the outset. Alternately
the Lorax could merely have been in possession of a semi-automatic
weapon.

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